In 1995, Newt Gingrich Almost Predicted The Credit Crisis, Except For The Part About It Being Caused By Saddam Hussien-Trained Hackers

“[Newt] Gingrich warned of a horror scenario in which Saddam Hussein trained a hacker army to cause civil unrest by issuing 500,000 American Express cards and then charging absurd fees.”

Take a leap and replace Saddam Hussein with financial institutions of all stripes and Amex with debt instruments of all kinds and Gingrich almost nailed a huge part of what went wrong during the credit bubble and subsequent crisis a decade or so in advance.

So perhaps if there’s any historical figure Gingrich most resembles, it’s Nostradamus. After all, if you make an incredibly high volume of outlandish and vague yet specific predictions, facts can eventually be contorted to prove you almost right…sort of.

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